


Ichabbie Shorts

by CastleriggCircle (BanjoOnMyKnee)



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Episode Fix-it, Episode Tag, F/M, First Time, Green Card Marriage, Ichababy, Marriage of Convenience, Random & Short, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-02 08:44:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 13,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5242025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BanjoOnMyKnee/pseuds/CastleriggCircle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A more permanent home for assorted short Ichabbie pieces I've been posting on Tumblr. So far they're all either S3, linked to one of my post-S2 canon divergence AUs, or set in some indeterminate future where Abbie and Crane are together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sleepy Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> Set after S3 Ep 3, when Crane is recovering from his wounds on Abbie's couch.

Abbie could barely keep her eyes open, but going to bed would mean leaving him alone on the couch…and she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. How was she supposed to sleep, a whole two rooms away, when she couldn’t look and listen for herself to confirm he was still breathing?

Crane could try to make light of it all he wanted, but she’d held him in her arms and watched him labor for breath, watched him slip out of consciousness. She’d needed all her training to keep her calm when everything in her had wanted to weep and rage at him for coming so close to leaving her again when she’d only just gotten him back.

This was stupid. She was exhausted. She should just go to bed and set an alarm to check on him every few hours, like you did when someone had a concussion. He wasn’t in danger anymore—at least, not much more than they always were. But she couldn’t leave. Instead she found herself sliding out of her chair to sit curled on the floor beside him.

She needed to check his temperature before she could rest, that was all. She felt his forehead—he didn’t even stir at her touch—and her own for comparison. His was warmer, but not scarily so. He was resting. Healing. He’d be back to cooking weird English pies with vaguely phallic names and pontificating at how the culture had fallen from the Founding Fathers’ ideals before she knew it.

But she didn’t get up. Instead she found herself smoothing his hair back from his face. So soft and thick. She was getting used to it shorter. Did nice things for his bone structure. Which had already been nice. She ran a fingertip over his eyebrows, touched the bump at the bridge of his nose—and still he slept on, though he shifted a little, turning his head toward her with a soft sigh.

Caught in a trance, she traced the planes of his cheekbones, laid her palm against his face, feeling the texture of his beard…and his eyes fluttered open.

“Lieutenant,” he murmured, only it came out more like _Lef-tenna,_ slurred and three-quarters asleep.

She didn’t move. Wouldn’t want to startle him all the way awake, not when he needed his rest so much. “Just checking your temperature—” she began, when he curled a surprisingly strong hand around the nape of her neck and pulled her head down to his for a kiss.

This was crazy and she should pull away, but he was warm and alive and breathing the exact same air she was, and the prickle of his beard against her skin, soft sleepy lips and a languid tongue slipping out to taste her, and—she had to stop this.

She sat up and tucked his hand back under the blanket. “Shh,” she said in response to his wordless whimper of protest. “You’re asleep. Go back to sleep.”

She got out another blanket and pillow and spent the night curled in the chair. He’d probably think it had all been a dream, if he remembered it at all. Abbie wished she had that luxury.


	2. Age-Mates

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every time someone talks about Crane being 200+ years old, I want to say, “No, he’s not. He’s not a vampire or a Time Lord or whatever with centuries of experience. He’s a guy in his 30′s who spent his first three decades in the 18th century, and a young man torn out of his native time is a whole different thing from actually living for centuries and seeing the rest of us dying like mayflies around you.”
> 
> So, I wrote this thing. Abbie’s POV, indeterminate near-future time when she and Crane are lovers:

It’s easy to forget that in terms of actual lived experience, she and Crane are about the same age. Sure, he was born over 260 years ago, but he’s not going-on-300 like he’d be if he’d been turned vampire in 1781 instead of dying or something close to it. If you just count the amount of time he’s spent breathing, eating, drinking, learning, loving, fighting, making memories…he’s 35, if her math is right.

Most of the time he seems way older or younger, though. Older when he’s in rant mode, going on about how America was meant to be before the present generation ruined it with sales tax and central government and selfie sticks. Younger when he finds something about the twenty-first century he likes. Which means pretty much all the technology. Assassin’s Creed or a food processor, a fast car or a new app for his phone and Ichabod Crane turns into a little boy Santa was good to on Christmas morning.

But in bed they’re the same age. Even at a moment like this when she’s just watching him sleep. She’d never say he looked boyish asleep, not with that beard and that nose and those eyebrows. Yet the tension, those lines of worry and alertness between his brows that never quite go away when he’s awake…those disappear when he sleeps. He’s young, timelessly so, and relaxed.

And when he wakes up and a slow smile breaks over his face to find her there and watching him, when he stretches out a long arm to draw her down to him…oh, then he’s just the right age. Old enough to know what he’s doing, young enough to be athletic and daring and ready to try new things. Strong as their partnership, their bond, is in all ways, nowhere is it better than here, raw and naked and equal. Young, but filled with the tenuous hope of growing old together, never abandoned, never parted.


	3. Out of the Shadowlands

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OK, I'm sure this one will be rendered completely obsolete as soon as the mid-season finale airs (40 minutes from the moment I type this for you Eastern and Central time folks)...but I'm posting it anyway.
> 
> There's been speculation that the midseason finale will involve either Crane or Abbie going into the underworld in trade for Jenny's life and freedom. Here's my speculation on that speculation.

In the end Miss Jenny is the one who finds a way to bring her sister back. Crane and Joe can do nothing but stand guard on a snowy February night under a full moon as she casts a circle with an ancient coin at its center, a bribe to Charon to bring a soul back across the Styx. She chants, she sways, she calls upon Hecate…and suddenly there’s a shimmering within the circle, formlessness taking on form.

_Abbie._ Abbie crouched naked and shivering, patting the snowy ground, then staring at her own hand in a kind of terrified wonder. It had worked, they’d done it, they’d tricked Hades itself and got her back…but good God, they’d been so busy locating just the right sort of incense and making sure Miss Jenny knew how to pronounce the Greek incantations and arming themselves with every sort of enchanted weapon in case Abbie returned trailing vengeful monsters. (Crane had not allowed himself to entertain the notion that Abbie herself might, as Joe put it, _come back wrong._ ) They’d thought of all that, but none of them had thought to bring a warm set of clothing, or a thermos filled with coffee or soup?

He drops his crossbow, sheds his coat, and sinks to his knees before her, sheltering her in heavy wool warm with the heat of his body. She touches the coat with the same bewilderment she’d shown the snow and her hand, and Crane fears that she has come back wrong, not turned and demonic but shattered and witless.

But even as he inwardly vows to devote his life to her care and to seeking her cure, her eyes lift to meet his, and he somehow knows she’s all there, all one piece. Now her hand seeks him. She pats at his face, his hair, before settling to rest on his chest, feeling his breath and the beat of his heart.

“Crane,” she says, her voice cracking.

“Abbie. Lieutenant.” He pulls her against him. They must get her to someplace warm, and soon.

“You’re…solid. You’re so _solid._ ” And now her hands are running over her own body, and a frantic, giddy laugh bursts from her. “ _I’m_ solid. Is this—this is real, isn’t it? I’m real again?”

Crane thinks he understands. The Greek underworld was for the soul only, not the body, and its residents were more a faint echo of their living selves than the grander, glorified resurrections promised for the blessed in Christian paradise. “Yes, you’re real,” he said. “Your sister found the way. You’re real and alive, and in Sleepy Hollow.”

“Oh.” She looks at him again, a shaky, uncertain smile on her lips. “Take me home. Please?”

###

Between their vehicles, they’re able to cobble together more clothing for her—she winds up clad in a pair of Joe’s sweat pants, so long on her they serve to cover her cold bare feet, and a t-shirt of Miss Jenny’s under Crane’s coat. Before Joe will let Crane take her home, he pulls out his medic’s kit and examines her vital signs, which he pronounces perfectly normal but for a slight elevation of blood pressure and heart rate, no more than one would expect in a healthy person under extraordinary stress.

Through it all, Abbie is quiet, more so than Crane would like, but she clearly knows them all and understands what is happening. She weeps when she embraces her sister, and when Joe wraps the blood pressure cuff around her arm she makes a joke about a toy doctor’s kit he’d owned as a child. But she keeps getting distracted by the sheer tangibility of everyone and everything. She cannot seem to get enough of touching the world around her, hands roaming from Miss Jenny’s hair to the ties at the neck of Crane’s shirt to the scratchy Velcro of the blood pressure cuff to the smooth glass of the car’s window, as if each is as wondrous as the other.

Miss Jenny tries to come home with them, with Crane’s encouragement. Who could have a greater right to be at Abbie’s side than her own sister? But Abbie rebuffs her, sitting up straight and strong with visible effort. “I love you so much, Jenny,” she says. Her voice shakes, and she blinks rapidly. “And I want to spend all day tomorrow with you,” she continues in a firm, steady, thoroughly _Abbie_ tone. “Maybe you can make Mama’s mac and cheese—oh wait, you can’t. I’ll do the cooking.”

Her sister laugh-cries, but it’s a joyous sound. “You had me worried there for a minute. You sure you’ll be OK tonight?”

“Yeah. This is just—a lot to take in at once, you know? Give me a night to get used to having a body again.” And she hugs herself, drawing Crane’s coat more tightly about her.

Miss Jenny’s eyes widen a little, and she nods. “Of course. Got it. C’mon, Joe.” And she leads her partner back to their truck.

Crane and Abbie are silent at first as he starts the car to drive back to the house he’s been keeping ready for her these past three months. He’s relieved to see her settle into place and buckle her seat belt with a normal, comfortable gesture, though her fingers linger a little over each distinct material—fabric strap, cold metal buckle, plastic fitting.

“How long?” she asks as he turns from the earth-and-gravel forest path onto the paved road.

“Three months. Today was the fifteenth of February.” Three eternal months.

“Hm.” It’s a noncommittal, guarded sound, but one so characteristically her that his heart soars to hear it. “Could’ve been worse.”

“Indeed.” He knows that better than anyone.

Now she laughs a little. “Missed Christmas. Hell, I missed Valentine’s Day.”

“I still have your Christmas gift waiting for you. I—I hoped we’d get you back far sooner.”

“Well. I can open it tomorrow over mac and cheese. Which Mama always made for Christmas dinner. Maybe we can find some half-off Valentine’s chocolate still around for dessert.”

They fall into another silence after that. When Crane cannot bear it any longer, he asks, “How long did it seem, for you?”

She blows out a thoughtful breath. Her hands are still exploring, but without the same frantic pace. She runs a hand over the slats of the car’s heat vent, tugs at a spot on her knee where the sweats’ fabric has pilled. “Much shorter and much longer,” she says at last. “It wasn’t like Purgatory. No torment, no tricks. But it was so empty. I was a shadow, and…after awhile even my memories and thoughts weren’t much more solid than the rest of me. It was dull, deadly dull. I kept hearing Pandora’s voice, with the ears I didn’t exactly have anymore, telling me if I’d just drink from the Lethe, then it would be better. I’d forget it all. Forget that I’d ever been Abbie Mills, forget the whole solid world. No more wishing for what I could never have again. I was so close to it, so many times. But every time I’d remember you.”

She turns her head now, and he feels the weight of her eyes upon him, large and dark and serious. “I remembered that last moment. That moment—it never quite turned into a shadow like the rest. So I held fast for a little longer.”

He’d told her he loved her. He’d told her that as long as he drew breath, he’d fight to bring her back. And he’d taken her face between his hands and kissed her farewell.

She remembered that above all. “Oh, Abbie…” In that moment he can say no more.

When they reach her house, he carries her inside, since she has no shoes to protect her from the snowy ground. Her arms are tight around his neck, her fingers in his hair. And when he sets her gently on her feet just inside the front door, she pulls his head down to hers and kisses him hard. “I need you,” she breathes against his lips.

He stands frozen. To have her here in his arms, warm and real and alive, when he’d almost given up hope—well, he needs her, too. But what will that mean for them when morning comes?

Her fingers twitch, digging into the nape of his neck. “Please, Crane. Help me feel alive.”

Oh, hang it all. Tomorrow can worry about itself. He can deny her nothing tonight. He closes the hair’s-breadth space between their lips with an open-mouthed kiss. They’re both frantic, grappling with each other, gasping quick breaths before plunging back together. But when she shrugs out of his coat and reaches for his trousers buttons, he catches her hands. “Bed,” he says.

She nods. “Now.”

He leads her to his room. Hers is still exactly as she left it three months ago, and it seems better to go to a place that has held life and change all through that time.

They leave the lamp lit as they scramble out of their clothing and fall together onto the bed. At first they are almost wrestling, battling for the prize of who can touch more, who can taste more. Then with a firm twisting motion she pins him on his back, nips at the spot where his neck and shoulder meet, and begins working her way down his body, stroking and kissing and biting.

When she reaches his cock, she takes it in both her hands and grins at him, her eyes alive and alight with mischief. “Now, _this_ is solid.” As she bends over him, her voice drops to a whisper. “No more shadows.” And then she envelops him in warm soft heat of lips and clever tongue, and he loses all his words, all his intentions, in the bliss of pure sensation. He tries to warn her as he is about to come, but she only sucks harder and takes more of him in until he spills helplessly into her mouth.

She slides back up his body, looking pleased with both herself and him, and the only way he can make up for his haste is to devote himself to her pleasure, to making sure she knows in every delicious inch of her body just how alive and how beautiful she is. When he finally parts her legs and lowers his head to taste her, she cries his name and her hips arch off the bed. In that moment there is something sacred about them together, bright souls drawn together in the raw physical joy of their animal bodies.

They love each other through half the night, but eventually grow tired enough to turn off the lamp, curl into each other’s arms, and draw the blankets up to their necks. “Crane?” she murmurs.

He strokes down her spine. “Yes?”

“It’s wonderful to be alive again.” She presses her lips against his shoulder. “With you.”

His eyes sting, and his heart feels ready to burst with all the joy and hope that have returned to him tonight. “Likewise.”


	4. Next

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after the events in Chapter 3, Out of the Shadowlands, Crane has a promise to make to Abbie.

Abbie awakens to a world awash with delicious sensation. Maybe this will all seem normal again soon, but for now the tiniest things fill her with delight. Soft flannel sheets against her bare skin. Thin, bright winter sunlight filtering through the curtains. The warmth of Crane’s body curled at her side, one arm draped loosely over her shoulder, the soft steady rhythm of his light snores. His scent filling her nose with every breath—his own indefinable Crane-smell she’d recognize anywhere, layered with his shampoo and soap, plus the sweat and sex of their tempestuous night.

She doesn’t regret it. She’s pretty sure it would’ve taken them years to get to this point if it hadn’t been for her sojourn in Hades—but apparently being dead a few months clarified things like that.

(She’s sure it will confuse plenty of other things. It occurs to her she’ll have a lot to sort out soon. What all has happened while she was gone? Just for starters, how the hell did Crane manage to keep this house and not have it foreclosed on?)

No. All that can wait. She’s alive again, and God, it’s delicious. She shifts and stretches, simply enjoying the tense and release of her calves, the flex and wiggle of her toes.

Crane stirs and blinks. When his eyes focus on her, they widen, and his grip on her shoulder tightens.

She smiles at his amazement. “Hey, you.”

“Abbie.” He lets out a long, shuddering breath and draws her into an embrace almost tight enough to smother. “You’re here. You’re real.”

She presses her lips into the hollow of his collarbone, then wriggles just free enough to see his face. “Sure looks that way, doesn’t it?” 

A giddy laugh escapes her throat, pure joy in life bubbling up, and Crane grins back. “Looks, feels…” He dances his fingers down her spine.

“Sounds, smells…tastes.” She kisses him, and that’s the last of the talking for awhile. They are so good together. Abbie knows it’s far more than just her heightened, reborn senses, but she means to enjoy that part of it as long as it lasts—the wonder of having a body to entwine with his, the slide of skin on skin, even just the way the sun catches the gold strands in his brown hair.

After, when she’s collapsed on top of him catching her breath, her stomach emits such a loud, insistent growl that neither of them can help laughing. 

“Breakfast?” he asks.

“Yes.” Time to figure out what comes next.  
   
Abbie showers while Crane is making breakfast, and for the first few minutes it’s the same sensory delight everything has been since she got her body back—hot water on her skin, steamy air filling her nostrils—but then the memories of the Underworld come flooding back. At the time they’d been just the vaguest hints, little more than a sense that she or someone much like her had lived _before,_ and fought alongside someone much like Crane. But now the memories come freighted with detail and emotion—back to back and terrified, facing down demons in a rocky desert, a night of shared passion in an olive grove, presiding together over a sunrise ceremony in stone circle, filled with a desperate and defiant hope…

Who _is_ she? What _are_ they? She misses the simple days when the answers had been in George Washington’s Bible.

She laughs at the absurdity of it. Somehow it’s enough to bring her back to the present moment, and she can take simple pleasure in drying off with a plush, clean-smelling towel and in the mouth-watering aroma of frying bacon pervading the air once she steps out of the bathroom.

She enters her own room for the first time since her return, and finds it almost exactly as she’d left it. She dresses in clothes that still fit her perfectly—only why wouldn’t they? As far as she can tell, she has her exact same body back, even down to the minute scar on her kneecap from where she fell off her bike when she was eight.

It’s all so strange, and she doesn’t know how to make sense of it, so she focuses on the practical. “I have so many questions,” she asks Crane between bites of French toast, bacon, and strawberries after she rejoins him in the dining room.

“I can well imagine.” He’s eating with gusto, too, and she’s already noticed he looks thinner. So did Jenny, last night.

“Three whole months…” she says. If it had lasted much longer, would he have wasted away to a skeleton? It’s terrifying, how much they need each other—but she shakes her head. She isn’t ready to carry the full weight of that yet, so she sets it aside and lets her questions come tumbling out. “What did you tell Danny? Am I legally dead or just missing? Joe and Jenny are a thing, right? How did you ever make the mortgage payments? My God…I missed so much. Who won the Super Bowl? Is Donald Trump still running for president? Please say no.”

He laughs and holds up a warding hand. “I will answer all that and more.” Abruptly his face turns sober and he leans across the table toward her. “But first I want to promise you that…I believe the phrase is, _I’ve got next._ ”

What? She blinks at him.

“Is that not the correct phrase?”

“It’s a phrase, sure. Whether it’s right or not depends on how you’re using it.”

“Ah.” He pauses, stares at his plate, fidgets his hands, then stills and meets her eyes again. “In the time I have known you, you have already stayed behind in Purgatory to allow Katrina to escape it, leapt recklessly into a portal to 1781, and now spent three months in the Underworld.”

She nods slowly. She sees where he’s going with this. “I did what had to be done at the moment. Every time.”

“Nonetheless. The text time a portal or a rift opens before us, I shall be the one to plunge into it.”

She takes a bite of bacon, savoring its salty, smoky crunch, as she considers her words. “Crane. You can’t plan for that. It’s not like you’ve been shoving me into dangers you’re unwilling to face yourself.”

“But the effect is precisely the same. Therefore, the next time—no, the next three times—are my turn.”

If either of them could really promise any such thing, this Witness gig would be a lot easier. “Unless it has to be—like if only a woman can enter, or there’s something about my lineage that’s keyed to the portal, or if the bad guys have you bound and I’m free, or—”

“Abbie, please. I know we cannot anticipate every conceivable circumstance, but I swear that if it is in my power, I will do this for you.”

He needs to say this, she can see. Maybe sometimes it’s okay to promise something you can’t fully control, to state your intentions for who you are and what you’re becoming. She reaches across the table to clasp his hand, interweaving their fingers together. It’s almost as intimate as their night of lovemaking. “Deal,” she tells him.


	5. Sex Ed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cranky Crane, condoms, and a cucumber.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set about a week before the S3 midseason finale, and contains spoilers for that episode.

Crane is in a foul humor that November afternoon. He blames—or credits—that gloomy, short-fused temper for much of what follows after the Lieutenant arrives home, humming cheerfully and laden with a pair of grocery bags.

When he stands to help, she waves him back to his seat. “It’s just a few things. Won’t take me but a minute.” So he tries to return to his work, but he is distracted by her presence in the kitchen, the grace of her movements as she sets her burdens on the counter, shrugs out of her coat, and begins sorting her purchases into their proper homes in the refrigerator and cabinets. He’s finding that he misses the jeans she wore almost every day when she was truly a lieutenant—the crisp dark trousers that are evidently the proper garb of a federal agent aren’t quite so deliciously revealing. But as she stretches to reach what to someone of her stature is a high shelf, he can still appreciate the curve of her slim waist and full hips, enjoy a fleeting peek at the smooth, soft skin of her lower back as her shirt rides up a few inches…

He huffs out a sigh, wills his burgeoning arousal to subside, and resolutely forces his attention back to the array of books and papers laid out on the table before him. If she wanted him to indulge in debauched musings upon the compact perfection of her form, after all, she would not be shoving him so forcibly into the arms of another woman. 

At least Egyptian hieroglyphics are the most effective anti-aphrodisiac he can imagine short of an actual blow to the groin. He had not learned their meaning in his own time—could not have done so, since the discovery and decoding of the Rosetta Stone had occurred during his long slumber. And while his eidetic memory served well enough that he could look at a set of hieroglyphs and accurately reproduce it with pencil or pen, to actually interpret their meaning was no simple task, especially when the inscription he is trying to decipher is so fragmentary. He is used to much greater facility with ancient texts and language—truly, with any purely academic challenge—and three quarters of what he knows the Lieutenant would term his _cranky mood_ arises from being forced to put forward so much effort on a matter he feels ought to come easily for him.

“You look like you could use a break.”

Abbie leans against the doorway between the kitchen and dining area, surveying him with all-too-knowing eyes. Sometimes he hates that she knows him so well, can read him like a child’s book in plain English when she is so careful and guarded. She is hieroglyphic. She is Linear A, as yet undeciphered.

“I think I’m getting closer,” he says. “The inscription speaks of Anubis, and of a portal to the underworld, but as a journey taken by a living soul walking among the dead.”

Her shoulders ripple in an elegant shudder, and he notices that she isn’t empty-handed. He would welcome a bottle of beer just now, or perhaps a bag of donut holes, but he is less sure what to make of a large cucumber and a small black box. “Not a journey I’d want to go on,” she says. “Anyway, if you think about something else for awhile, maybe it’ll help. Come back to it later with a fresh mind.”

He nods. He has indeed often found that to be the case, that some intractable problem becomes simple after a night’s sleep or even a shower or a quick stroll. And while the Lieutenant can be difficult to read, he reckons she has a plan for the something else he is to think about.

“You’ve got another date with Zoe tomorrow, right?”

“Such is our plan.” They intend to try a dinner again, this time at a quiet café, followed by a movie, most likely _The Martian._ He is looking forward to the meal and the film, but he is beginning to have his doubts about the company.

“Thought so.” She fidgets a little, uncharacteristically, then steps further into the room. “I’ve got a gift for you.” 

A cucumber? Are they to make pickles together, or perhaps share a salad?

“This is going to be such an awkward conversation,” she continues, “and probably one we should’ve had back in 2013. Though I don’t know if that would’ve been better or worse.”

“You may speak with me about anything you wish,” he assures her.

“Doesn’t mean it won’t be awkward,” she counters. “Look, I have no idea how much sex you’ve been having in this century. I mean, you and Katrina…not to mention what you might’ve gotten up to the past nine months…”

He pushes his books and papers aside and raises an eyebrow at her. “Nor am I privy to that information about you,” he points out. “I always supposed it would be impertinent of me to ask. Did you not speak of the importance of good fences?”

She lifts her chin. “Hasn’t stopped you from commenting every time a man so much as looks at me.”

That is…truer than he likes to admit. In his irritation with her and himself, he speaks honestly. “The answer is none, Lieutenant. Katrina and I…never came together as husband and wife after she was freed from Purgatory. She felt we needed time to come to know each other again.” They had made the attempt, once, but it had been abundantly clear on every possible level that both were acting out of duty rather than desire. It had been more awkward than this conversation, more awkward than his adolescent fumblings when he’d lost his virginity, and he’d been more relieved than he would’ve thought possible when she’d suggested they give up. “In hindsight, I am glad of it,” he says. 

Abbie doesn’t look surprised at this confession, but nods her understanding.

“And no, I did not enter into any assignations during my travels.”

“Really. Two years is one hell of a dry spell. Or…234 years, I guess.”

He has his reasons. Moreover, he has his _hand._ “Mm. I hardly count the first 232.”

She laughs a little at this, just an amused hmph, then crosses to his side of the table and sets her burdens down before him. “Well, then, I’m glad I got these for you.”

The gold text on the black box proclaims it to contain _Magnum Large Size Condoms, Thin, with Ultrasmooth Lubricant._ His face heats, and he wonders idly just how red his cheeks are. Crimson? Claret-colored? 

“Condoms are not so recent an invention as you seem to suppose,” he manages to grind out.

“Mm, is that so? But I’m sure they weren’t making them out of latex back in your day. And if you’re going to be sexually active again—”

He clears his throat. He has no wish to discuss sexual activities with Abigail Mills unless she means for them to engage in them together. “It was very kind of you to, er, provide me with these, though I assure you I have no immediate plans for such involvement.”

She looks faintly dubious. “Third date tomorrow night.”

“What, is that now the custom?”

“I wouldn’t say custom, exactly. Sometimes it’s faster, sometimes it’s a lot slower. Depends on the couple. But Zoe may have her own plans for involvement with you.”

He devoutly hopes not, for he is beginning to grow uneasy about her. At first her attentions had been flattering. She was so very kind, so eager to please, so ready to listen to him, so uncomplicated. After Katrina all that seems a virtue. And yet Zoe says so little about herself. She’s always so quick to turn the conversation back to him when he tries to ask her about her own interests and goals. It’s as if she is a blank slate. What at first seemed gentle and pleasing in her is becoming insipid—though behind his boredom a nagging inner voice sometimes suggests that her adoring interest might be a front for…something. Some scheme of Pandora’s, some other trap or distraction.

He has been meaning to ask Abbie’s guidance on how to delicately extricate oneself from a modern courtship. How can he let Zoe down gently? And is he mad to suspect that perhaps she isn’t as sweet-natured as she seems? But no, his Lieutenant has bought him a package of prophylactics. She is still bent on match-making for him, and with the first woman who came to hand. “Very well.” He stands. “Now I am prepared for any eventuality. I thank you.” He dips his head in a quarter bow, trusting she’s known him long enough to read how annoyed and affronted he is as he dismisses himself from her presence. He is biting back an _I bid you good day, madam._

She grabs him by the sleeve and pulls him back. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Not so fast. You need to practice.” And she opens the box with a deft twist of a slender finger and takes up the cucumber in her other hand.

Now the vegetable’s purpose becomes clear. “On a cucumber.”

“Hey, be flattered. This was the largest one I could find. They made us use bananas, in my ninth grade sex ed class.”

“Sex ed.” They taught children of fourteen or fifteen year such things in _school?_ Never mind that his own awkward sixteen-year-old self might’ve benefitted from such knowledge all those long centuries ago.

“Yep,” she says cheerfully. “Boys and girls separated. Still pretty embarrassing, having old Mrs. Olshansky talking you through putting a condom on a banana.”

“And you think I am in need of your ninth grade sex ed.” Does she suppose that because he has been celibate for two years he has forgotten how to perform the act in question?

“Well, it’s not like you were ever in ninth grade, and some things—” 

He leans closer to her, obliging her to tilt her head back to meet his eyes. “Do you imagine me too ignorant of a woman’s body to know how to proceed, should I find myself in bed with one?”

She shakes her head slightly. They’re so close that he can feel the heat of her body, the faint quickening of her breath. “It’s just that now—”

“Because I assure you that I am not.” He takes her face between his hands and lowers his mouth to hers.

He keeps his touch soft, almost reverent, his lips gentle. His aim is to persuade, to seduce, and if she shoves him away, he will make her the most abject of apologies and suffer whatever punishment she deems fit, even if it entails placing condoms on every cucumber, banana, and zucchini in the house under her watchful, critical eye.

But when he runs a cautiously questing tongue along the seam between her lips, he hears the cucumber hit the floor with a soft thud. Abbie lifts her hand to his chest, not to push him away but to curl into his shirt front and pull him closer. She arches up on tiptoe, and her other hand is at the nape of his neck. The kiss turns into a hungry thing, a mutual and devouring feast. He trails his hands down her body, fingertips skimming over the delicate meeting-place of neck and shoulder, palms grazing the sides of full breasts and following the curve of waist and hips down to her glorious arse. With a groan, he seizes her and hauls her against him—then remembers he is trying to win a point here.

He breaks the kiss but keeps his hold on her and smiles down at her wide eyes and the fresh-kissed softness of her lips. _See there? I know my business._

Her eyes sparkle with merriment, and she dances her fingertips down his chest and belly to palm his arousal. A challenge met and raised. _Yes, and see what I do to you?_

Well, then. If he is to make further proof of his prowess, he would have it be in bed. Though there is much to be said for a quick tumble on the floor or in a chair or against the wall, for this he wants a wider and more comfortable stage to display his skills. So he sweeps her off of her feet and into his arms, as if she is his bride ready to be carried over the threshold. She lifts an eyebrow, her expression at once amused and impressed, and stretches out an arm to grab the box of condoms before he carries her up the stairs. He grins. His Lieutenant’s presence of mind never fails her.

He takes her to his bedroom. It is closer, and his patience has its limits. He sets her on the bed and kneels before her, kissing her again as he reaches for the buttons of her blouse. She counters by tugging his shirttail free. They don’t speak for some time as they kiss and undress each other. A look is enough to get permission for each baring of more skin, to show pleasure in each new touch, to raise the stakes in this new game they are playing together.

But when he trails his hand down her spine and deftly unhooks her bra, she draws back and raises an eyebrow at him. “Sure you haven’t been getting in any practice?”

“Hook-and-eye fastenings are also not a new invention,” he points out. Then he is rendered speechless again by the sight of her breasts, so soft and heavy and shapely, and he all but falls upon her chest, lips and tongue hungrily seeking the taut peak of a nipple. She laughs a little, a giddy, triumphant sound, and he remembers he is supposed to be showing himself a skilled lover. He slows down, makes his tasting artful and caressing, his hand on her other breast matching his motions. And his turn at triumph comes when her hands clutch at his hair, her breath hitches in soft whimpers, and her hips thrust toward him.

He means to give her the fullness of pleasure before seeking his own. Two years _is_ a long dry spell, and he doesn’t trust himself to last long once he’s inside her—not when she is the very woman he’s longed for during that entire period. “I could kiss every inch of you,” he murmurs, suiting actions to words as he nibbles and licks his way down her belly, placing an especially lingering kiss at the point of her hipbone as he draws off her last remaining garment—the merest scrap of black lace—and casts it aside. 

“Could you?” she says with a little laugh—no longer taunting but breathless and giddy with anticipation—as he gently parts her legs and begins kissing up the inside of her thigh.

“Mm, yes. Though I believe my favorite spot will always be just…here.” And then he tastes her, and oh God, it’s so good, and can there be anything better than knowing it is his touch that has made her so wet and abandoned and eager, that his lips and fingers are drawing those moans and gasps from her throat, her legs tightening around his shoulders, making her cry out in bliss as she comes?

He slides up the bed to lie beside her as she catches her breath. _You enjoyed that,_ he thinks, and something in his face brings that look of mischievous defiance back into her eyes. “Cocky bastard,” she comments cheerfully, then levers herself to sit up and take his cock in her hands. 

He could almost come from her touch alone, but he’s not too far gone to notice a certain caution, a delicacy, in how she explores him with just her fingertips. “What is it?” he asks.

“First time I’ve ever been with an uncircumcised man,” she says. “You’ll tell me if I’m hurting you, right?”

“There’s something you don’t know?” She looks daggers at him, and he hastens to reassure her. “I will.”

Her hands tighten, and she keeps her eyes on him, watching his reactions as she strokes and tugs. When she takes just the tip into her mouth, clever tongue swirling, it’s almost too much, and he grabs her hair. “I want to be inside you,” he says, and it’s desperate and yearning and not at all the voice of an expert lover fully in control of a seduction.

She reaches for the box of condoms, which she’d set on the bedside table, and takes out a small packet. “Then watch and learn.” He obeys, watching her carefully tear the packet open and roll the condom onto his cock, explaining the importance of leaving some room at the tip and squeezing it to prevent an air bubble, and that he must keep hold of it as he pulls out, which he must do immediately after he comes. It is just clinical enough to keep him from spending from the touch of her hands and from the sight of her, naked and unashamed in the fading November daylight.

But then she’s kissing him, rolling onto her back and drawing him over her, and he is all desire again. He settles between her legs and guides himself into her, watching her face all the while.

Something about her soft sigh, her wide eyes, the way her fingertips dig into his shoulders, breaks the _I dare you_ spell he’s been under ever since she explained the purpose of that thrice-damned cucumber. “Abbie,” he gasps. He’s trembling from head to toe with the effort of staying still.

“Crane.” He sees the answering recognition in her eyes. This is no longer a game; it’s _them,_ Abbie and Ichabod, friends, partners, Witnesses, naked in each other’s arms, joined in the most intimate of ways. Already gone too far for anything ever to be the same.

She rests a hand against his cheek and winds her legs around his hips. “Don’t stop.”

He nods and begins to move, thrusting in a steadily building rhythm. And he tells her she’s beautiful, calls her his treasure, while she breathes his name and tells him he feels so good inside, so right. And they’re truly together, truly themselves, two become one flesh, as she comes for a second time and he follows just after, her name on his lips.

After, they lie in each other’s arms, just breathing. There is so much he’d like to say he doesn’t know where to begin.

“Wow,” she says.

“Indeed.”

More silence. She traces the outline of his scar and runs her fingers through his chest hair. “Incidentally, the point of ninth grade sex ed class isn’t technique. It’s about safety—preventing diseases and unwanted pregnancy. Hence condoms, and knowing how to use them right.”

His face heats. “Oh.”

Now she laughs. “I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise.”

“My apologies.”

She snuggles closer to him. “Don’t apologize for this.”

Part of him wonders if he should. They’ve been…precipitate, to say the least. But later that evening he calls Zoe and, as gently as he can, tells he doesn’t see a romantic future for them, though he values her friendship. She isn’t happy—tells him he can figure out his citizenship all by himself now—but he doesn’t think she’s so very angry that she’ll sabotage it. He hopes.

When he tells Abbie what he’s done, she only surveys him in thoughtful silence, but after they share a late dinner, talking of Pandora and how they might counter her next threat, she takes him by the hand and leads him to her bedroom. And while they never quite speak of what they’re doing or why, for the next week they cannot get enough of each other, letting their bodies say what they cannot yet put into words.

And once she has gone he knows not where, as he pores frantically over every ancient text on the underworld he can lay his hands upon, he is glad of their week together. It sharpens the ache of missing her, and he wishes he’d spoken of his love. But he knows, and trusts that wherever she is, so does she. And he will bring her back. That much he vows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I started this chapter, I thought it was going to be pure plot-what-plot smut. Somehow by the time I'd finished it morphed into my headcanon for what Crane and Abbie are really thinking of during their last words and looks in S3 E08.


	6. Bleed and Fight for You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is set about 3 months after the end of my post-S2 AU [Nine Months,](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4793675/chapters/10970420) and was written in response to a prompt asking for a fic where Crane goes berserker defending Abbie and their baby.

Sleepy Hollow has been all but empty of supernatural mayhem for the past three months since Crane’s return from his wanderings on the night of Isaiah’s birth, though neither Crane nor Abbie is fool enough to believe their battles are done.

Yet he has no foreboding of danger this February Sunday. Abbie is returning to her duties at the precinct on the morrow, so they’ve treasured this last uninterrupted day as new lovers and new parents before the everyday world begins to stake its claims upon her again. 

When evening falls, he leaves Abbie and Isaiah alone for just long enough to pick up a box of diapers from Target and cartons of mu shu pork, spring rolls, and Mongolian beef from Abbie’s favorite Chinese eatery. As he parks the car and strides to the front door, he thinks only of how delightful his life has become, with Abbie in his arms each night and the exhausting but joyous responsibility of caring for a son who he swears grows more beautiful and clever and engaged with the world around him every day.

But as he sets the diaper box down and turns his key in the front door, he hears Isaiah cry, and not his usual insistent wails of hunger or discomfort. This is a thin, frightened sound that sets Crane’s heart to racing. He sets the food atop the diapers and draws a long knife from his coat, wishing he had a more potent weapon, then shoves the door open.

Four tall figures shrouded in gray, hooded robes have invaded. All carry swords, and the tallest of the quartet holds his pointed at Abbie, the tip less than a foot from her throat. She clutches Isaiah against her, shielding him with her body, but when she meets Crane’s eyes her expression is defiant.

“Witness,” Abbie’s captor says, “I believe you have something of ours.”

Crane is in no humor for negotiation, not with anyone who’d threaten the two persons he loves most in all the world. “No,” he says simply, hefting the knife and calculating where to strike first.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Abbie shift, freeing her left hand, where she wears a topaz ring Miss Jenny gave her. The sisters have been practicing their magic, honing their powers, and he knows the golden brown stone (the very color of Isaiah’s eyes) carries protection and power. She gives him the tiniest of nods, and he lashes out at the closest demon-monster just as a burst of gold light knocks her captor’s sword from his hand and sends the weapon spinning across the floor to land at Crane’s feet.

He stoops to seize it—ducking the blade of his opponent as he does—and rises to do battle. There is nothing of the duelist’s art he learned as a youth in the way he swings the heavy sword. He fights with wild berserker frenzy, slashing, stabbing, beheading, and he hardly feels the bite of his enemies’ blades that knick a shoulder, slash at a thigh. No one will harm his son while he has breath in his body or blood beating through his veins.

These monsters cannot stand against him, but even when all have fallen, he does not stop. They are demons. Who knows whether they are truly dead? He stabs and kicks and stabs again until at last Abbie’s voice and Isaiah’s cries penetrate the red fog that has claimed his brain.

“Crane. Crane!”

He stands back and shakes his head. As his vision clears and his breath slows, he sees them, whole and safe, though Isaiah’s terrified and bewildered wails pierce him to the heart.

“They’re not going to get any deader,” she says.

He nods, casts the sword aside, and kneels before them. “Abbie. Isaiah.”

She leans against him, and he wraps his arms around them both. Isaiah’s cries hiccup to a stop, and he squirms and lets out a happy little gurgle—the boy loves nothing better than having both his mother and father wrapped around his finger at the same time. Crane leans back just far enough to gaze at his son’s face. He has Abbie’s smile. The two of them are everything. There may be seven billion people in the world, and they may all need the Witnesses to keep the forces of evil at bay. But that number is an abstraction. His world, his reality, is all here—his beloved, their son, the life they are just beginning to build together. Nothing is more worth fighting for.


	7. Smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More baby fic, this time set a little before Christmas in the same post-S2 canon divergent AU as [Trust & Love.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3554270/chapters/7826780)

As Abbie fumbles for her key, juggling gift-laden shopping bags, she hears Crane’s rich baritone voice raised in song. Something about a cask of ale and a wassailing bowl. Sometimes she thinks his favorite part of fatherhood is having a captive and enthusiastic audience for his antique repertoire of sea shanties, patriotic ditties, ballads of fair maidens forsaken by their lovers, and, now that it’s almost Christmas, wassail songs. 

She finds the key and manages to open the door without dropping anything. Crane stops singing the instant he hears her come in and looks up at her from where he’s perched on the floor in front of the Christmas tree, Benjamin cradled in his lap. “Abbie! He’s _smiling._ ”

She sets the bags down, closes the door, and hurries to join them. But when she slides to the floor beside them, Benjamin is wearing the same alert, serious expression that has been his default when not crying or sleeping since the day of his birth. 

“Well, he was smiling,” Crane qualifies. “Benjamin, smile for Mama.”

“He was smiling because you were singing to him.” She nestles into her husband’s side and stretches out a hand to stroke her son’s curly dark hair. It still amazes her that between them she and Crane made this _person,_ already so bright and curious and, she very much fears, as stubborn as both his parents put together. “You like it when Mama or Daddy sings, don’t you?” She clears her throat and sings her own mama’s favorite carol. _“Go, tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Go, tell it on the mountain, that Jesus Christ is born.”_

Benjamin smiles, and Abbie’s eyes sting. She’s never seen anything more beautiful. She sings all the verses so he’ll keep smiling, and he obliges, kicking at the air to better show his enthusiasm. “See?” she says at the end. “You sing, he smiles.”

“It’s wondrous.” Crane turns his head to press a kiss against her temple. “He has your smile.”

Does he really? She doesn’t think hers is half so amazing.

They keep singing, sometimes together, trading melody and harmony, sometimes taking turns. Abbie learns two wassail songs and teaches Crane _Merry Christmas from the Family._ And through it all Benjamin smiles, with small interruptions when hunger or a wet diaper become more important than making Mama and Daddy sing and sing and sing some more. By nightfall they’re both hoarse, but it’s worth it.


	8. Ordinary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another rather fluffy domestic follow-up to Trust & Love. Something about the Christmas season makes me want to write kidfic.

Abbie got pregnant for the first time after a single night of 18th century passion that she’d had every reason to believe would be erased from the timeline and even her memory when she returned to her home century. The second time was a lot more work.

The day after they slew the serpent-dragon bent on setting the world aflame in the seventh and final Tribulation, she and Crane slept in and nursed sundry bruises and singe marks. But the day after that she called her doctor and made an appointment to have her IUD removed. 

For the first three months, they didn’t do anything different. They just had a lot of sex—which wasn’t a change from before, except for the added excitement that maybe this time they were making a baby, Benjamin’s little brother or sister (they were hoping for a girl, but would be delighted with another son, too) who would make them the complete family of four they’d been envisioning for years.

One night Jenny and Big Ash had them over for dinner and announced that Jenny was pregnant, and how did Benjamin feel about being a cousin sometime early next year? The next morning Abbie bought a box of ovulation predictor kits. For three more months they tried to time their lovemaking just so, even abstaining for a few days while they awaited the all-important luteinizing hormone surge to build up a better sperm count.

In the seventh month, she went back to her doctor and asked what they were doing wrong. “Nothing,” the doctor said. “You were 32 then, and now you’re almost 38. It can take longer. But it’s not too soon to think about a reproductive endocrinologist.” And she’d written up a referral.

But the specialist couldn’t fit them in till six weeks later. “Let’s just take a break till then,” Abbie suggested. “Don’t time anything, don’t track anything. We don’t have to have sex at all unless we want to.”

Of course, they wanted to plenty of times. And it was nice not to have to worry if the position they happened to be in the mood for was considered favorable to conception, or what might be the effects on Crane’s sperm count if they made love three times in one night, or whether they’d lose the fertile window when they went the better part of a week without so much as a quick fuck between a difficult case at the precinct and nursing Benjamin through a stomach bug.

Ten days before their appointment was scheduled Abbie started noticing aching breasts and a familiar fatigue and faint queasiness. And yes, now that she checked the calendar, she was a couple days late. Still, she didn’t say a word to Crane about her suspicions. The next morning she crept out of bed while he was still asleep, took a test, and made herself not look at the thing until the required two minutes had crept by.

Then she went back to the bedroom and shook her husband awake. “Hey Crane. Two lines.”

He rubbed his eyes and frowned at the plastic stick. “What?”

“Looks like we can cancel that appointment. We did it.”

Enlightenment dawned, and Crane pulled her atop him and kissed her thoroughly. After a tender, celebratory round of lovemaking—Abbie couldn’t help but think of it as a victory lap—he reached for his phone.

“It’s a little early to tell anybody,” she said. In both senses. It wasn’t quite seven AM, and she didn’t want to let anyone non-medical know until ten or twelve weeks.

“I am aware of that, Lieutenant.” She grinned. She loved that he still called her that sometimes. “I am only looking up your due date…ah, May 17, according to this site.”

“Perfect timing after all.” Off his inquiring look, she said, “Won’t have to be pregnant in the summer.”

In the end, Anna Grace Mills-Crane arrived in the world on May 14, five months to the day after Jenny’s little Lori Hazel. “It’s an ordinary miracle,” Abbie remarked to Crane that night in the hospital when Big Ash and Jenny brought Benjamin in to meet his sister and Baby Lori her cousin.

“I’d call it extraordinary. This is…all I ever asked of life.”

“Exactly. We survived. We get to be an ordinary couple—sort of—with a son and a daughter we get to watch grow up. That’s miracle enough for me.”

He nodded, and a slow smile spread over his face. “It is indeed.”


	9. Gingerbread

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the last one of these I’m going to do before the new year–I plan to spend my Christmas break reading the Chernow Hamilton bio and putting together a detailed plan for the original fic I'm planning to write in 2016 (aka my first-ever urban fantasy novel)!
> 
> Anyway, this is a follow-up to the previous chapter, and it is squarely in the tooth-rotting Ichababy fluff genre! Consider yourselves warned…

Abbie paused in the doorway, a helpless smile overtaking her face at the domestic scene being played out at the dining room table. They’d never decorated gingerbread houses before, but she had a feeling it was about to become a tradition.

Benjamin’s school was having a gingerbread decorating contest as part of their winter festival, and he was determined to take home first prize for the kindergarten-to-second grade division. The rules allowed parents to help assemble the houses, but not to decorate them, and Abbie figured if anything her little overachiever would have a hard time convincing the judges his family had obeyed the rules.

“What do you think, Mama?” he asked, his bright brown eyes shining up at her.

She ruffled his hair and kissed his forehead—soon enough he’d outgrow his snuggly side, at least when it came to his parents, so she was enjoying it while it lasted. “That it’s the best gingerbread Independence Hall I’ve ever seen.” Benjamin knew he’d been named after the Founding Father—though not that his parents had met the gentleman in question—and had already adopted Franklin and Revolutionary Philadelphia as his own.

Now his eyes narrowed. “How many have you seen?”

Fortunately she’d already learned better than to use meaningless superlatives in her son’s presence. “There was a whole Revolutionary ginger village at the tree lighting when you were three.” She met Crane’s amused eyes across the table. He’d enjoyed nitpicking the thing. “All the famous landmarks. But yours looks more like the real thing.”

Benjamin nodded satisfaction and went back to carefully placing tiny ginger-cookie chimneys along the roofline.

Abbie sidled around to the other side of the table to greet Crane with a kiss. He’d taken on the arduous task of keeping Anna Grace, aged 18 months, from ruining her adored big brother’s project in her eagerness to participate in every aspect of his life. Crane had bought a gingerbread house kit, the better to allow the little girl to feel like she was doing the exact same thing Benjamin was, and held her perched firmly on his lap while the two of them decorated the little square house together.

Or, to be more accurate, while Crane decorated the house and Anna Grace ate the gumdrops meant for the roofline. She took advantage of her parents’ momentary focus solely on each other to swipe at the frosting Crane had piped along the roofline.

“Anna Grace!” he chided, while biting back a laugh. “That’s not for eating. We’re making a pretty house to go next to the nativity scene on the mantel.”

She looked at him with evident disbelief out of eyes as dark as her brother’s were bright. Clearly this thing was made of food. Why couldn’t they eat it? She seized another gumdrop from the bowl and pushed it into Crane’s mouth. “Is eat, Daddy!”

Abbie laughed as her daughter grabbed yet another gumdrop and stretched out an arm to feed her, too. “For Mama!”

She chewed gamely. She’d never much liked the purple ones. “At least she’s generous.”

Crane shook his head and surveyed the house in rueful amusement. “I suppose it’s an accurate representation of a gingerbread house after the big bad wolf tried to blow it down.”

She leaned into his shoulder. “You’re mixing your fairy tales.”

He shrugged unrepentantly. And, really, Abbie had no complaints about her happily ever after.


	10. Appetites

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> My fix-it fic for 3.10

It’s twilight when they step outside together, and Abbie halts, arrested, her grip on Crane’s arm tightening.

“What’s wrong?” He draws even closer. She feels his breath in her hair, his warmth at her side. Solid. Alive. Real.

The sky is a deep, purpley blue, Venus low and bright on the horizon. Her eyes sting at the beauty of gathering darkness. “I thought I’d never see the night again.”

And then he’s standing behind her, his arms around her waist, his chin resting atop her head. “Abbie,” he breathes.

Entrancing as the world is, it’s too much after her long isolation. The ordinary noise and bustle of Sleepy Hollow on an ordinary weekday evening strikes her ears as loud like the front row at a concert, bright and crowded like Times Square. She startles at the honk of a car horn a street or two away, and Crane’s embrace tightens.

His touch is right. His touch is _necessary._ And she’ll never forget her joy at stepping out of that lake and seeing that contrail in the sky, knowing she was back and not alone anymore. But she isn’t quite ready for anyone in the range between Crane’s hands on her and a plane full of strangers an oblivious 30,000 feet above her head.

And in the midst of it all, she finds herself struggling to recognize a sensation that ought to be familiar, only she hasn’t felt it in almost a year.

“Crane,” she says with dawning realization and joy. She tugs just free enough to walk, but doesn’t break contact, grabbing his hand and threading her fingers through his. “I’m _thirsty.”_

***

They share the largest bottle of water the corner grocer has on offer, and Crane vows never again to indulge in a crotchet about the overpriced extravagance of such purchases. He isn’t so thirsty as she is, but he is more relieved than words can express to be at home in his body again, able to touch and be touched, to brush his fingers against hers as he takes the bottle from the car’s cup holder, to feel the water so cold, simple, and clean in his mouth.

If he feels so dazed and out of balance after mere subjective days as a formless soul in a dark void, what must her state be after spending almost a year in such a harsh, lonely, and unchanging dimension?

She is strong, his lieutenant. But there is a brittleness about her he has never seen before, no matter how great the peril or grief, and no wonder. He senses the days and months to come will challenge her in ways neither of them can yet imagine.

He longs to be all strength for her—a pillar to lean upon, a shelter from whatever soul-storms are sure to come. He does his best to conceal his own anxiety—to mask his need for the reassurance of her touch as a gift of comfort and protection all for her sake, to hide how the surrounding night that so delights her reminds him of the blind void he wandered after Pandora severed his soul’s link to his body. Abbie has endured far more. He cannot allow himself the luxury of weakness when she needs his strength.

As he turns down a street with an assortment of fast-food restaurants, her stomach growls. Loudly.

“Hungry?” he asks.

She chuckles. “Guess all my appetites are coming back one by one.”

“There isn’t much fit to eat at the house.”

She eyes him sidelong, rests a light hand on his thigh. “Yeah, you don’t look like you’ve been eating much. Let’s get something here.”

“Are you certain? It seems your first meal should be something…extraordinary.”

“Believe me, right now a burger and fries will be.”

He realizes that he, too, is truly hungry for the first time he can recall. And the burger and fries prove extraordinary indeed, especially when she reaches to steal one of his fries despite his protest that she has a perfectly good carton of her own. His are curly while hers are plain, she points out, and she wants a taste of both. As a peace offering she feeds him one of hers in exchange, pressing her fingers against his lips. He nips at them, she laughs, and his heart is so full of love and relief that he remembers how to see beauty in the night again as they walk hand in hand into her house—their home—with Abbie softly exclaiming to see the stars and moon shining above them.

***

Sleep is the next appetite to come back to Abbie, but she fights it long enough to take a shower and wash away the smell of that place—not a stench, exactly, but something as bright, hard, and brassy as the never-ending sunlight. 

When she steps out, she kicks her discarded clothes into a corner. Tomorrow she’ll burn them. She pulls on an old Mets tee and red pajama shorts. Soft cotton. Bright colors. A loose, gentle fit. 

Crane is waiting for her, sitting on the hallway floor wearing blue plaid flannel pajama pants and a darker blue bathrobe. He scrambles to his feet, mumbling apologies, but she just shakes her head and walks straight into him. She slides her arms around his waist and sighs against his chest as one hand cups her head and the other presses the small of her back.

She knows what he’d been about to say in the Archives before he noticed their bright-eyed, eager audience of Jenny and Joe. She’s too tired—too wrecked—to process it right now, but she does know they can’t be apart anymore. Not now. Maybe not ever.

“Come to bed,” she says. “I mean…I don’t want to sleep alone, not tonight.”

“Nor do I, Lieutenant.” His voice hitches on something just short of a sob. “Nor do I.”

***

Abbie’s last semi-coherent thought before slipping into sleep spooned against Crane is to fear nightmares—that she’ll dream herself back in that place.

Instead she dreams, in vivid erotic detail, of herself and Past Crane in that carriage in 1781, only this time as they argue they lean yet closer together until their lips meet. In the convenient way of dreams, it’s no work at all to get each other naked, the carriage is as comfortable and roomy as any bed, and his big hands are on her bare skin as she rides him to the swaying rhythm of—

Just as she’s almost there she awakens to the real Crane, in the real world—the wondrous real world, full of night and life and change—gently shaking her by the shoulder and murmuring reassurances in her ear. _Shh, Abbie, just a nightmare. You’re home, you are safe, I’m here._

She drags in a deep, steadying breath—which does nothing to calm the insistent throb between her thighs. “I’m OK,” she manages. “Not a nightmare.”

He draws back a little, hand sliding from her shoulder to rest lightly at the dip of her waist, and, oh God, his _touch._ “Ah,” he says. “I do apologize for waking you, but you were thrashing and muttering so—you said my name—so I thought…”

Abbie felt her face heat. “I was dreaming, yeah. But not a nightmare. I’m sorry I woke you. Just—go back to sleep. I’m OK.” She doesn’t know how _she’s_ supposed to get back to sleep, though, as keyed up as she is.

“Ah,” he repeats in a voice gone hungry and half-strangled. “Appetites.”

“Yeah.” And she doesn’t know if this is the right time or the right way to go about it, but she is sure they’ve been building toward this moment from the day they met. Why deny their bodies when their souls are already so entwined?

She presses back against him, so warm and lanky and strong and, yes, hard. “Crane?”

His breath is warm against her neck, and just as fast and harsh as hers. “Abbie?”

She draws his hand up to cup her breast, and it’s so much better than the dream, so much more. _“Please.”_

That’s all it takes. His mouth is at the sensitive meeting-place of neck and shoulder, kissing, licking, nipping, and he reaches under her shirt, calloused hands on sensitive skin…she twists in his arms so she can kiss him properly.

From there it’s fast and sweaty, hungry and perfect. In the moonlight she can just make out the look on his face, raw and honest and true, as he slides into her for the first time. It’s everything. _He’s_ everything.

After, they sleep the rest of the night in a naked tangle of limbs. When she awakens the next morning, he’s watching her, and she kisses him to drive away that little anxious furrow between his brows.

He rests his forehead against hers. “You’re _here.”_

She threads her fingers through his hair. _“We’re_ here.”


	11. Stay With Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A green card wedding night...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set sometime in the near future of show time (as in, somewhere between 3.13 and 3.18), assuming that throwing Joe's money at Crane's immigration problems won't be enough to make them go away.

On the night after he married the lieutenant, Crane prepared for another solitary night in the guest bedroom. Theirs was naught but a marriage of convenience, after all, entered into so that he might remain in the country he had fought to found, safe from any fear of deportation to the one he had forsaken.

So when he finished his evening ablutions and stepped out into the hallway, he froze at the vision that awaited him.

Abbie. Clad only in that translucent black shift that had haunted his dreams and a matching, minuscule set of shorts.

He blinked hard and rubbed his eyes. While she had been missing, a demon had used that very garment to _catfish_ him, and he almost expected to open his eyes to find Abbie vanished, or at least dressed in her ordinary cotton pajamas.

But she was still there, favoring him with a crooked smile. “Crane. It’s our wedding night.”

Instinctively he tightened the sash holding his bathrobe closed. “I had thought ours was to be a marriage of convenience. You…never suggested otherwise.”

She swayed closer to him. “Well, now I am. If that’s what you want, too.” Now she stood so close that he could feel the warmth of her body. She tilted her head up to meet his eyes, her lips slightly parted, and she slid a fingertip inside his sash.

This was so sudden. Surely they ought to speak of this first, before taking so momentous and irrevocable a step…but her breathing quickened, and her tongue darted out to lick her lips.

“Oh, God, Abbie,” he said on a strangled groan, and crushed his lips against hers.

He knew he ought to go slowly, to make this perfect for her, but almost before he knew it they had staggered together to her bed, frantic hands shoving at each other’s clothing until they lay skin to skin in a tangle of bare limbs. _Slow down, slow down,_ but he couldn’t, she wouldn’t let him. He doubted even five minutes passed between that kiss in the hallway and the moment he thrust into her for the first time, but she was as ready as he was, her mouth falling open on a gasp, her legs winding around his hips.

They reached the pinnacle of pleasure at almost the identical moment…but her cries transformed into deep, shuddering sobs, and he felt her tears hot against his chest even while their bodies remained joined.

Dear God. Had he completely misinterpreted…had all of that been _feigned,_ and if so, _why?_ He slid out of her and tried to edge away, but her grip on him only tightened, fingernails digging into his arm and shoulder.

He spoke into her hair. “Abbie. Please, look at me. Did I…I didn’t intend…” Didn’t intend to hurt her, didn’t intend to take anything that was not freely and joyously offered.

She took several deep breaths, swallowed hard, and lifted her head. She no longer sobbed, but tears still flowed freely down her cheeks. “It’s not—” She shook her head. “This was exactly what I wanted. This, with you. I—I don’t know why I’m crying. I don’t.”

He had no idea what to say, so he stroked her hair and kissed her tears away.

After a few minutes she drew the blankets up to their shoulders and curled against his side, her arm flung fierce and possessive across his chest. “Stay with me, Crane. _Please._ Stay with me.”

There was more to this than he understood, but he was a man of his word. He pressed his lips to her forehead. “For as long as we both shall live,” he whispered.


	12. Stay With Me, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after the green card wedding night in Stay With Me

Abbie awoke from the best sleep she’d had since returning from the Catacombs—deep, dreamless, and restful—to find Crane watching her with a look of such boundless and patient affection that it made her eyes sting all over again. Who had ever looked at her like that but this man? 

No one besides him. Crane. Her husband. 

She wouldn’t let him leave her again. Not ever. She couldn’t bear it. That’s why she’d decided to seduce him last night, make theirs a real marriage with a real wedding night. She knew he wanted her. She wasn’t blind. And she wanted him, too. Had wanted him for a long time, as much as she’d tried to deny it. Might as well stop ignoring the obvious.

It hadn’t quite worked out like she’d planned. Oh, it’d been good sex—best quickie she’d ever had. But she’d been so busy trying to bind him to her that she’d forgotten to hold any of herself back, and now _she_ was the one who was bound. That’s why she’d broken down and wept, she realized.

And now what was she supposed to do with that? With him?

“Hey,” she said softly.

He smiled. “Lieutenant.”

Then they both laughed, and for a moment everything seemed all right. Abbie stretched, and the blanket slipped from her shoulders. Crane’s gaze fell to her chest, his eyes gone heavy-lidded with lust.

Lust was simple. Lust she could manage. And if he looked at her like that, she could manage _him._ She laughed again, this time low and triumphant, pushed him to lie flat on his back, and knelt over him. 

This time was quick, too—God, how did it all feel so good with him, no matter how fast and raw? She let him use those big hands and ridiculously long fingers to play with her breasts and her clit while she rode him, but when he tried to sit up and wrap his arms around her, she pushed his shoulders back into the mattress and gave him a warning glance. _Not this time._ He raised an eyebrow, then drew up his knees, the better to meet her grinds with his thrusts.

And after she came she cried _again._ Crane looked so troubled—what man wouldn’t, to have a woman burst into tears every time they had sex?—that Abbie couldn’t help but blurt out the truth. The whole truth, that she only recognized herself about half a second before she spoke.

“I love you.” She flung it out as an accusation. “Damn it. And you left me.” 

She couldn’t be alone again. But how could she trust him to stay?

At least he didn’t instantly tell her he loved her too and spit out one of his florid wedding-vow promises—most of them more elaborate than the actual wedding vows they’d exchanged down at the courthouse yesterday afternoon—though she could see the words hover on his lips before he caught the lower one with his two top teeth, the ones that peeked out whenever he smiled.

“Ah,” he said.

By mutual instinct they shifted until they lay side by side, not touching until he took her hand in his. “That was a grave error,” he said. “Not, perhaps, the leaving itself, but remaining absent for so long, and not remaining in regular contact with you.”

“Damn straight.”

“I will not do so again.” Off her frown, he continued, “I know those are only words, but I mean to keep them. I hope that in time you will be able to believe me.”

“I know you mean to keep them. Most people don’t set out to break their word. But they leave all the time, whether they mean to or not. Dad left. They took Mama away. Jenny…well, that was more my fault than hers. Corbin died. I never had a boyfriend or a lover where we stayed together more than six months. Sometimes because of me, sometimes because of them. And—I think maybe it’s easier to just skip straight to the being alone part without the getting attached to people beforehand. Spares you the heartbreak.”

“Is it truly easier?” he asked softly.

For all his brains Crane could be as clueless as the next man, but every once in awhile he struck right to the heart of a matter. “When I stepped into that tree, I wasn’t expecting the Catacombs. I figured I’d either be dead and gone, or it would be more of a Purgatory or underworld kind of place. Monsters to fight, dead souls to talk to, or something like that. Not a year in solitary.”

He nodded encouragement, a faint frown drawing little lines of bewilderment between his eyebrows. 

Well, she didn’t always know what to say to herself either, lately. “I don’t want to go back to that, ever. But—it’s like I’ve forgotten how to be with people. The world is still too loud and busy for me, a lot of the time.”

“I think I understand that part, a little.”

Well, yes, he would. 1781 had been far from solitary, but it had been quieter. Differently paced. No wonder Crane was still jumpy and jittery compared to the Captain Crane he’d been then, though he was gradually becoming more comfortable in his skin.

That was reassuring. It was possible to adjust, to get back to normal. Normal-ish. Normal enough. “Yeah.” She played with his fingers, outlining the long, graceful length of them. “I don’t want to be alone. But I don’t want to need anyone more than they need me.”

He let out a ragged laugh. “Oh, Abbie. I don’t think there’s any fear of that with us. Do you—I hope you know much I love you. I’ve loved you for longer than I’ve had any right to. Perhaps I haven’t yet earned that right, but—”

“You still left.”

“I did.” His mouth twisted, and he looked up and off into middle distance, not meeting her eyes. “I was running from a great many things then, but perhaps the greatest of them was the weight, the burden of the knowledge that I had killed the woman I had once loved, for the sake of one who had become infinitely more dear to me.”

_Oh._ Yeah, she probably would’ve run away from something like that, too. “I missed you,” she said. “Every day.” Even when everything had gone right—when Quantico had accepted her again, when she’d won praise from her instructors there—she’d wanted to share it with Crane. And one of the reasons she’d broken it off with Danny, one she’d buried so deep she’d barely voiced it even to herself, was that as good as it had been in the moment, it hadn’t made her stop missing Crane.

“As did I, you.” He drew her hand to his lips, brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “I am bound to you in so many ways—our partnership as Witnesses, friendship, love, now marriage…and if those bonds break, my heart will break with them.”

Now _his_ eyes shone with unshed tears, and Abbie had to blink hard. “That’s exactly it. It’s terrifying.”

“We could,” he said slowly, “put boundaries on our bond. Be Witnesses only. Have a marriage in name only.”

She wasn’t sure they actually could, now that they knew how they were together. “That’s…not what I want,” she admitted.

He kissed her palm hard, with a little swirl of tongue. “Good. Thank God.”

She laughed, and so did he. Leaning closer, she brushed her lips against his, a light tentative kiss like the one they’d shared after being pronounced husband and wife, but a shattering thing now they were naked in her bed.

“Abbie,” he breathed. “Lieutenant. Please. I know life is short, and chancy, ours more than most. And yet perhaps that gives all the more reason to embrace such joys as each moment brings. If—if you’ll let me try to love you, I hope that it will prove a less terrifying experience, in due course.”

She was in too deep to stop now. And besides, he was right. Damn it. You couldn’t live a life without regret, but if she lost him—she didn’t really think he’d leave her again, but he could die, or either one of them could be sucked into the next underworld or time portal or alternate universe or God only knew what else—if she lost him, she figured the heartbreak would be worse if she’d held back, put her walls back up, than if she’d let herself love him. “I’ll try,” she said. “I can’t promise not to be terrified. Right now I can’t even promise I won’t cry at random moments. Less than random moments.”

“I’ve no need of such promises,” he assured her. “Though I do I hope you’ll tell me if my actions are causing your tears, rather than…”

“…life, fear, and PTSD?” she supplied. Off his nod, she added, “I promise.”

He kissed her, then ran his hand down her side to curl possessively at her hip. Drawing back a little, he looked at her, eyebrow quirking up in hopeful inquiry. She nodded. _Yeah, again. And you’re in the driver’s seat this time. Show me what you’ve got._

With a satisfied hum, he rose up over her. She rolled to her back, stretching luxuriantly into her soft sheets, and let herself just revel in the moment, here with him, his body a lean, beautiful thing in the morning sunlight…he tugged at her earlobe with his lips, trailed kisses down her neck…a bite where neck met shoulder, just sharp enough to make her cry out in startled pleasure…

She kept reveling, but it was far more than a moment. And it wasn’t like it was surprising that Ichabod Crane was thorough, but…whoa. “I should get married more often,” she said, more than a little breathlessly, as he slid down her body.

“On the contrary.” He parted her legs, then looked up at her with a glint of mischief. “I shall make it my mission to ensure you are wholly satisfied with having done so just the once.”

She was satisfied, all right. This time when she came she felt like a firework, exploding into light, but she didn’t cry.

Crane looked relieved. And ridiculously pleased with himself. Smug bastard. _Beloved._

“I love you,” she said. This time, just a statement of the fact. “But this isn’t going to be easy. _We’re_ not easy. I’m plenty difficult all by myself.”

He gathered her in his big, encircling arms. “But worth it. Every moment worth it.”


End file.
